Europeans Admire and Federalists Decry the Present System

Alfred

To the real PATRIOTS of America: … America is now free. She
now enjoys a greater portion of political liberty than any other country under
heaven. How long she may continue so depends entirely upon her own caution and
wisdom. If she would look to herself more, and to Europe less, I am persuaded it
would tend to promote her felicity. She possesses all the advantages which
characterize a rich country—rich within herself, she ought less to regard the
politics, the manufactures, and the interests of distant nations.

When I look to our situation—climate, extent, soil, and its
productions, rivers, ports; when I find I can at this time purchase grain,
bread, meat, and other necessaries of life at as reasonable a rate as in any
country; when I see we are sending great quantities of tobacco, wheat and flour
to England and other parts of the globe beyond the Atlantic; when I get on the
other side of the western mountains, and see an extensive country, which for its
multitude of rivers and fertility of soil is equal, if not superior, to any
other whatever when I see these things, I cannot be brought to believe that
America is in that deplorable ruined condition which some designing politicians
represent; or that we are in a state of anarchy beyond redemption, unless we
adopt, without any addition or amendment, the new constitution proposed by the
late convention; a constitution which, in my humble opinion, contains the seeds
and scions of slavery and despotism. When the volume of American constitutions
[by John Adams] first made its appearance in Europe, we find some of the most
eminent political writers of the present age, and the reviewers of literature,
full of admiration and declaring they had never before seen so much good sense,
freedom, and real wisdom in one publication. Our good friend Dr. [Richard] Price
was charmed, and almost prophesied the near approach of the happy days of the
millennium. We have lived under these constitutions; and, after the experience
of a few years, some among us are ready to trample them under their feet, though
they have been esteemed, even by our enemies, as “pearls of great
price.”

Let us not, ye lovers of freedom, be rash and hasty. Perhaps the
real evils we labor under do not arise from these systems. There may be other
causes to which our misfortunes may be properly attributed. Read the American
constitutions, and you will find our essential rights and privileges well
guarded and secured. May not our manners be the source of our national evils?
May not our attachment to foreign trade increase them? Have we not acted
imprudently in exporting almost all our gold and silver for foreign luxuries? It
is now acknowledged that we have not a sufficient quantity of the precious
metals to answer the various purposes of government and commerce; and without a
breach of charity, it may be said, that this deficiency arises from the want of
public virtue, in preferring private interest to every other consideration.

If the states had in any tolerable degree been able to answer
the requisitions of Congress—if the continental treasury had been so far
assisted, as to have enabled us to pay the interest of our foreign debt—possibly
we should have heard little, very little about a new system of government. It is
a just observation that in modern times money does everything. If a government
can command this unum necessarium from a certain revenue, it may be considered
as wealthy and respectable; if not, it will lose its dignity, become inefficient
and contemptible. But cannot we regulate our finances and lay the foundations
for a permanent and certain revenue, without undoing all that we have done,
without making an entire new government? The most wise and philosophic
characters have bestowed on our old systems the highest encomiums. Are we sure
this new political phenomenon will not fail? If it should fail, is there not a
great probability, that our last state will be worse than the first? Orators may
declaim on the badness of the times as long as they please, but I must tell them
that the want of public virtue, and the want of money, are two of the principal
sources of our grievances; and if we are under the pressure of these wants, it
ought to teach us frugality—to adopt a frugal administration of public
affairs.…